Micro sites?

[Mike.Goracke]

It all depends whether it makes sense for your business.

For instance if you sell shoes, you would probably not benefit from having an Armani microsite and a Nike microsite UNLESS you want users to assume you ONLY sell Armani or ONLY sell Nike.

The company I work for uses microsites, because our main site is just too generic. We sell software and our software can be configured for any industry, but to say that can deter some people. So we have our main site (just examples here) software.com and microsites food.software.com, jewelry.software, animal.software.com - this approach works for us, because we have slightly different solutions for each of these industries and we do not want to look too generic or single people out if we listed these on our main site.

Some of it has to do with SEO, but really think about it from a marketing standpoint and how you want to market to your visitors. We want to market to visitors with a microsite saying, "We have awesome food software" instead of saying with our main site, "We can tailor your software for the food industry".

It has worked great for us having microsites. It is a little more work, because you need to manage multiple sites and have unique content across multiple sites, but we are seeing really good returns.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[YNWA]

I agree. Thats what  I thought when I was told.

I would rather have our retail site and build links direct to that from backlinking and our own blog, social etc..?

I thought the idea behind the micro sites was to take advantage of the brand being in the domain name and giving the micro site fresh content every few days dedicated to the brand in question (eg armani then another site would dedicate to Lyle & Scott). But it seems a lot of work when you can have 1 blog talking about all brands? But then you loose the url name, the brand keyword etc..?

[YNWA]

We are a menswear retailer, so we sell shoes, tees, trainers, jeans, shirts etc.. from about 15-20 different brands.

now i wouldnt want 20 micros sites but would concentrate on say 4-5 top brands? all unique content, all with their own external domain name.

I am not a fan, it doesn't seem right but then again I am new to it.

last thing i want to do is risk it for nothing.

[Mike.Goracke]

Right on.

So here is an example for you. You sell designer men's apparel, but you also sell fishing and hunting apparel. Both apparel, but completely different types of audiences. You could have designerapparel.com (your main designer men's apparel site) and a microsite of outdoor.designerapparel.com. This subdomain microsite approach would carry some of your domain authority to the subdomain, all while providing a good experience for users, because the audiences and end product are so different, even though they are men's apparel.

Kind of a funky example, but I hope it illustrates how it can be used for men's apparel.

In your case, (although I don't know your business plan or customer segments, etc.) I would not worry about doing microsites.

Mike

[GregoryTK]

Interesting question!

I was recently also looking into this tactic, but as mentioned by Tom it takes quite some effort in order for these micro sites to be worth something SEO wise.

You would ideally need to get themed domains with age, PR and existing backlinks without paying over the odds. This in itself will take you some time to get it right. Then you need to change the Name servers, change Registrar.  And you need hosting, preferably all over the place so it doesn't look like a network. After which you can start building the micro site, for which you need to create content... phew, hard work!

But then you can indeed use some rather grey SEO tactics towards these buffer micro sites if you would want to... without being at risk of bringing the entire house down.

Obviously Mike uses his micro sites differently and successfully, but from what I can tell reading your question the SEO firms you mention are probably going for the technique as described by Tom.

After evaluating this option I decided to rather try and come up with a Content idea closer to Public Relations than Page Rank...

[mblsolutions]

We have used micro sites in the past for targetting 'niche' long tail keywords that would get lost within our main website. They have purely been from the point of view of benefiting the customer in helping them to find information that they need.

They tend to be for areas of our business and keywords that are on the fringes of our business.

We have found that by having a micro site it enables us to talk to our customers about these individul products directly to them rather than on a page that is within a website talking about a wide variety of products. (along the same lines as Mike explained in his example) We have two micro sites and one works really well for us the other doesn't. It is worth considering but like Tom says there are a number of warnings to take into consideration.

I think overall it depends why you are considering building the micro sites? If it is for the benefit of the consumer so that they can have clear and concise information that is relevant to them then it is worth doing with caution.

Hope that is of some help.

[YNWA]

I think the idea they suggested was for pure SEO. Branded URL, unique brand focused content. With links going to the website.

So someone searches for Armani J31 Jeans, they find our armanij31jeans.co.uk site, unique content, pictures, style advice all focused to that brand and style of product. We update it weekly with new pics, new stock, new content.

I see the idea but I sort of think, is it better to just focus on building links direct to the website, rather than having this network of sites all linking back to the main website?

[GregoryTK]

Actually if you are creating new domains it is going to take quite some efforts to boost the micro sites' PR in order for the backlinks to send you some juice... Efforts that can then better be directed at your main site.

Micro sites for backlinking purposes only make sense if they have theme, age and PR.  Which means you will probably need to buy existing domains that are not being renewed before the actual deletion of the website... and that's a "game" in itself.

Micro sites aimed at your customer segments are another story obviously as described by Mike & Oliver.

[mblsolutions]

If it is purely from an SEO point of view then I think that I would avoid doing the micro sites, I think that you would get penalized from search engines.

I agree with Tom if you are putting all that work in that they are suggesting then why not just put that amount of work into your main website/blog/social media? That way you are unlikely to suffer any negative affects and will receive long term benefit in terms of content production, traffic and social media shares?

Hope that it all works out well for you.

Have a great weekend.

[TomRayner]

^ Good summary of this extensive discussion!

[irvingw]

Absolutely. This gets you a thumbs up. If you are not connected to the main site, then you can take some risks and have some fun, and conduct SEO experiments without harming the enterprise site.

"But then you can indeed use some rather grey SEO tactics towards these buffer micro sites if you would want to... without being at risk of bringing the entire house down."

[irvingw]

The reason why would be for multiple 1st page positions in the serps for the same keyword phrases. Most sites are not lucky enough to get rewarded with host crowding positions (your same domain ranking multiple times on the first page) but if you have microsites that you are able to get ranked now you have several first page positions.

If you are addressing different targets, this can be accomplished probably easier with your main, established already trusted site.

Google is addressing exact match domains as a ranking factor for exact reason. Microsites are spammy and grey hat and outside of Google's webmaster guidelines if addressing the same targets.